Load balancing is a service used in computer networks to distribute workload (e.g., processing and communications) across a plurality of computing resources, such as servers, computers, network links, processors, etc., in an effort to avoid overloading a particular resource. Distributing the workload across a plurality of resources may provide efficient utilization of the resources, high resource throughput, and a minimization of response time, as needed.
In one particular arrangement, load balancing may be used to mediate/control the distribution of workload across a plurality of servers in a server farm or cluster. In such arrangements, the load balancing is performed by a hardware or software entity that is referred to as a server load balancer (SLB).